Re-Mapping Turkish Power and Religious Policies in the Western Balkans
Re-Mapping Turkish Power and Religious Policies in the Western Balkans

Summary/Abstract: Turkey’s presence in the Balkans has attracted sustained scholarly scrutiny since its (re-) emergence in the conflict-laden 1990s. This attention – particularly pronounced among European observers – stems not so much from the scale of Turkey’s engagement (other countries like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, or Russia have larger economic or political footprints in the region) but from its perceived “anomalous” character within dominant regional (and European) narratives. Across the Balkans, nation-building projects have long conceptualised the Ottoman Empire, and by extension its principal successor state, the Republic of Turkey, as the (Near) “East” from which emerging nations were expected to distance themselves in their pursuit of Europeanness. This same notion of “nesting Orientalism” also structured Turkey’s perceptions of and relations with both Europe and its eastern neighbours for much of the century following the founding of the Republic in 1923 before being partly displaced by a less Europe-centred and more Asia-oriented Islamist worldview under the AKP government. From the formation of modern Christian Balkan states to the ethnic cleansing of Muslim populations – including the expulsion of several hundred thousand Bulgarian Turks from Bulgaria during the so-called “Great Excursion” (Goljamata ekskurzija) under Todor Zhivkov in 1989 – violence and exclusion were repeatedly justified through the claim that national territory had to be cleansed of Muslims or “Turks” in order to complete the process of Europeanization.

• Details
• Contents